Viktor Yushchenko

Viktor Yushchenko (23 February 1954-) was Prime Minister of Ukraine from 22 December 1999 to 29 May 2001 (succeeding Valeriy Pustovoitenko and preceding Anatoliy Kinakh) and President of Ukraine from 23 January 2005 to 25 February 2010 (succeeding Leonid Kuchma and preceding Viktor Yanukovych).

Biography
Viktor Yushchenko was born in Khoruzhivka, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union in 1954, and he began his career in banking during the 1970s, coming to serve as Chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine in 1993. He played an important party in the creation of Ukraine's national currency, the hryvnia, and he established a modern regulatory system for commercial banking.

In 1999, Yushchenko was unexpectedly nominated to serve as Prime Minister by President Leonid Kuchma, and he improved the economy. His confrontation with coal and natural gas oligarchs led to his defeat in a vote of no-confidence with 263 votes to 69, but he emerged as the leader of the Our Ukraine coalition in 2002. He and Yulia Tymoshenko formed a broad opposition bloc against Kuchma ahead of the 2004 presidential election, and he promised to name Tymoshenko Prime Minister if he won the election against President Kuchma and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

In 2004, as Kuchma's term came to an end, he ran for President as an independent, and he supported social partnership, liberalism, pro-Europeanism, Ukrainian integration into NATO, and the fight against corruption. During his campaign, he was subjected to an assassination attempt, ingesting hazardous amounts of TCDD dioxin, causing disfigurement which would take years to reverse. He won the presidency through a repeat runoff election between him and Yanukovych, and the Supreme Court called for a repeated runoff due to widespread electoral fraud in Yanukovych's favor. Yushchenko won the election 52%-44%, and popular protests against the electoral fraud led to the Orange Revolution.

However, Yushchenko fired his government (including Tymoshenko) in 2005 after resignations and claims of corruption. In 2005, it was revealed by former president Leonid Kravchuk that the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky had illegally financed Yushchenko's campaign, and, in 2006, Yushchenko appointed Yanukovych as his Prime Minister as part of a rapprochement with Russia. In 2007, he dissolved the parliament and called early elections, and his approval rating dropped to below 4%. He failed to secure a run-off spot during the 2010 presidential election, and Our Ukraine failed to win parliamentary representation in 2012.